


Mastermind

by jmtorres



Category: White Collar
Genre: Episode Tag, Fix-It, Gen, Jossed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-14
Updated: 2009-12-14
Packaged: 2017-10-04 10:19:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jmtorres/pseuds/jmtorres
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"And the only crime I managed to nail you on was securities fraud? That's not winning, Neal."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mastermind

**Author's Note:**

> This was my instant fix-it for episode 1.07, and as such a) contains spoilers b) is very silly.

"You!" Neal came storming into the office.

Jones and Cruz were on his heels looking ready for trouble, but Peter held up a hand to forestall them from dragging Neal away. "Me, what?" he asked.

"You're the one who was after my cache! You're the one who had Kate running scared, you're the one who turned my life upside down--" Neal sucked in a breath, and then seemed to run out of fury. He dropped into a chair and leaned his elbows on Peter's desk, asking plaintively, "Why, Peter? That's all I want to know. Why've you been doing this to me?"

Peter paused to wonder how certain Neal really was, if he had come in bluffing for verification. Might as well give it to him, though, if he suspected--the one thing Peter knew Neal would never forgive him for was if he were to lie outright in response to a direct question. Omission, manipulation, these things Neal understood, but if Peter told him to his face this wasn't true and Neal later found proof that it was, their relationship might never recover.

"Of course I want your cache," Peter said.

Cruz looked a little frozen and Jones muttered, "Maybe we'd better wait outside." He didn't actually move, though.

Neal ignored them, gazing at Peter in despair. "Is it the money?" he asked. "Do you need money? I can get you money."

"No, Neal," Peter sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose.

"Because I can see how before you wouldn't have felt like you could ask and I probably would have, well," Neal winced, "laughed in you face, if you'd come to me while I was in prison, but by now--aren't we past that? Don't you know you could come to me?"

"Neal," Peter repeated, "I don't need money."

"Then why?" Neal said. "What do you _want_?"

"I want," Peter started, but couldn't quite find the word to fit the desire. "Four years ago, I caught you on securities fraud," he tried to explain. "You've pulled, I don't know, dozens if not hundreds of other, smarter, trickier, more--artful jobs over the course of your career--probably that many just in the three years I was investigating you. And the only crime I managed to nail you on was securities fraud? That's not winning, Neal."

Neal got it, Peter could tell, a lot better than Jones and Cruz did. Cruz was, weirdly, just a little romantic about all the crap Neal had gotten away with, whereas Jones had never quite understood the viciousness their cat-and-mouse could get to, given how much Neal and Peter patently _liked_ each other.

But Neal's comprehension didn't prevent him from milking it for all it was worth: "So you want to what, put me away for good?" he asked. "Make sure I never breathe free again?" Poor, poor, pitiful Neal.

"Not _away_, exactly," Peter admitted. Jones looked vindicated. Cruz, for some inexplicable reason, looked horrified. "You know," Peter said awkwardly, "the longer your sentence is, the longer I get to keep you."

Neal's expression transformed. The woebegone Neal was gone, replaced with--it was supposed to be a blank slate, _don't notice how much I want this_ look, but Peter was too good at reading Neal's shining eyes. Peter grinned a little. Neal's mouth softened enough for him to say, happily, "Oh."

"Oh my God," Cruz bawled, "you're seriously going to--don't you even care about the ethical violations?"

"What, what ethical violations?" Neal asked, jerking up as if he'd managed to forget Jones and Cruz were there.

"I'm keeping a criminal from committing more crimes, and using him to catch other criminals," Peter said. "I fail to see a problem here."

"I'm sorry," said Cruz, "do you think because I'm not the department lesbian I don't have _gaydar_?"

"Okay, we'll be downstairs," Jones announced, shoving Cruz out the door.

Neal had swung around in the chair, arm slung over the back, to watch Jones march Cruz not nearly far enough away from the glass walls of Peter's office. "'Can't you tell they're,' move your head, Jones, something, something 'bizarre courtship rituals,'" Neal lip-read.

Jones had his back to them but Peter read from the set of his shoulders and his low hand gestures: "Not our problem, don't care, don't wanna think about it, please shut up."

Neal turned back to Peter, grinning. "So," he said.

A week later, Neal brought one of the Dutch masters in to work and laid it reverently on Peter's desk.

"_Landscape with an Obelisk_?" Peter asked. "Really?"

"Is that actually," Jones said to Cruz.

"Really," Neal said.

"You expect me to believe you were involved in the biggest unsolved art theft in American history, _twenty years ago_?" Peter said.

"The biggest art theft, solved or unsolved," Neal corrected, "and it was nineteen years ago. I was fourteen. The first job my mentor let me in on," he reminisced. Peter blinked away the mental image of a pimply-faced teenage Neal in a cop uniform. Impossible. Neal had probably never had a pimple in his life.

"So where's the other ten paintings?" Peter said. "Not to mention the bronze vase?"

"Sold them, eventually," Neal shrugged. "Harry only let me keep the Flinck because he was pissed off at how it wasn't a Rembrandt."

_Harry._ Probably a false name. Peter noted it anyway. He tapped his fingers on the desk. "You realize this will add several years to your sentence," he said.

"I know," Neal replied with dramatically wide eyes. "What's important to me is that this is returned to the Gardner."

"You're both freaks," said Cruz, throwing her hands up.

"Isn't there some kind of five million dollar reward associated with that case?" Jones asked.

"For the whole set," Neal answered cheerfully. "I'm only looking at a few hundred thousand, tops."

**Author's Note:**

> For more information on Neal's crime, see also: http://www.fbi.gov/hq/cid/arttheft/northamerica/us/isabella/isabella.htm


End file.
